I will admit, I thought Dodes'ka-den was only OK.

For anyone looking to get into Kurosawa, the new streaming service Filmstruck offers a two week trial and it includes the whole Criterion Collection which includes (almost) all of Kurosawa.

Dodesukaden was the one Kurosawa hated, and nearly killed himself over, right?

I really liked it! Call me crazy, but it's probably in my Top Five; I always enjoy departures from his larger-than-life hero stories (e.g. The Lower Depths), and I think the film's commentary on the tension between reality versus fantasy, and the human costs that this struggle can have, is particularly important for the internet age. I often find myself thinking back to the exchange between the mansion-building hobo and his child, or the near-catatonic, jilted lover; there's some really sobering insights in there, and while I can see why many people were put off by it, I enjoyed it immensely.

not a fan of Red Beard

Dersu Uzala is one of his best, but isn't as well known as most

Agreed...really only dislike Dodes'ka-den (although only watched it once). Lukewarm on Redbeard, and didn't see his last two films released after Dreams.

I've gotta give Dersu Uzala another shot, watched it in a flu fever haze and don't remember anything about it except snow.

The criterion collection, with a whole bunch of essential kurosawa classics, is also available with the premiujm hulu service. The Seven Saumrai is definitely a candidate for best movie of all time.

I watched a lot of Kurosawa in college. The library had a good collection of tapes. It's so much easier and more comfortable to watch The Seven Samurai in as format where you can watch an hour at a time.

Ikiru is so emotionally intense that I've only watched it twice over the years, but I still think of it as one of my very favorite films. Yojimbo is my favorite. I actually tried to cultivate Toshiro Mifune's walk after seeing Yojimbo.

Yojimbo is a good call, iirc that may have been the very first Kurosawa movie I ever saw. Either that or Rashomon.